“The treatment at the hands of this government is a disgrace,” said Serwotka at the PCS national conference in Brighton.

“In the past 10 years, the government said things could only get better, but they’ve only got worse.”

“Continued privatisation, the use of the third sector, the [claims of a] relationship between inflation and public sector pay, the effect of job cuts on service quality – it is a treatment that we should never put up with, and we should condemn those politicians, particularly Gordon Brown, who should hang his head in shame.”

Members agreed salary negotiators should reject all below-inflation offers, measured against the Retail Price Index.

Abandon pressure on Civil Service organisations to adopt local/regional pay.

“We are faced with a government and a prime minister who has said he wants to reduce the size of the Civil Service to its 1945 numbers of staff,” said Serwotka. “[That was] a time of rationing and hardship, in a country that still only had a minimal welfare state – what a miserable statement from a miserable prime minister”.